Definition of climate indicator plant species and their common minimum July temperature limits

Frederik Schenk, Minna Väliranta

This dataset provides a list of 62 different climate indicator plant species together with their minimum July temperature requirements.

For each plant taxa, the mean minimum July temperature (°C) is derived from their common northern distribution limit in Finland. The species selection is restricted to those which can be clearly identified in the form of plant micro- or macrofossil remains in sedimental records and which reach their modern common northern distribution limits in Finland.

The dataset can be used to reconstruct minimum mean July temperatures in the past by linking the identified micro- or macrofossil from the sediment to their known modern thermal requirements defined in this dataset. The taxa contained in this dataset cover a temperature range from ~11 °C to ~17 °C (sub-arctic to hemiboreal).

Data description

The dataset provides a list of N=62 climate indicator plant species together with their minimum July temperature requirements estimated from their modern northern distribution limit in Finland.

The dataset also provides information about statistical uncertainties, coordinates used to define the northern distribution limit and qualitative notes on the region where the common distribution limit is reached in Finland as compared to regions with only scattered occurrence.

Statistical uncertainties include the standard error of the mean and the taxa uncertainty (difference of mean vs. coldest estimate). An additional list of N=97 plant taxa is included with comments on why these were excluded as indicator species. Coordinates are given as Finland KKJ Uniform Coordinate System (EPSG:2393), which is Yhtenäiskoordinaatisto YKJ (KKJ zone 3).

The dataset is included in one excel (xlsx) spreadsheet file having four sheets with the following names:

C.0 Meta Data

C.1 Quantified indicator plants

C.2 Plants not quantified

C.3 Coordinates & Temp.

The same data are also available in four comma-separated values (csv) files. Character set: Western Europe (ISO-8859-15/EURO).

Comments

Please see references for more information on the indicator method (Väliranta et al. 2015, Schenk et al. 2018) and the details of the latest selection criteria applied to create this dataset (Schenk et al. 2020).

Metadata

GCMD science keywords

GCMD location

Continent > Europe > Northern Europe > Scandinavia > Finland

Status

Completed

Dataset language

English

Project

Climate instabilities during the last interstadial period, funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR 2015-04418) and Arctic Avenue spearhead project, a collaboration between Stockholm University, Sweden, and the University of Helsinki, Finland.